Russian concert hall attack suspects face court in Moscow

Today’s live coverage has ended. Here is a roundup of the day’s main events:

• The US said Ukraine had ‘no involvement’ in the Moscow terror attack. 
• Russia transported the suspected gunmen to Moscow for interrogation.
• Tributes were paid across Russia to the victims of the Moscow attack on an official day of national mourning.
• Russian authorities increased the death toll of Friday’s massacre to 137. 
• Ukraine said it destroyed two Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Officials have said that more than 5,000 people in Moscow and the surrounding region rushed to donate blood for those wounded during Friday’s massacre at a concert venue on the edge of the city. 

Long lines of people queueing to donate blood were seen across Moscow in the aftermath of the terror attack that killed more than 130 people. 

Moscow blood banks said on Sunday that they now had enough blood supplies to last four to six months. 

Ukraine’s energy ministry has said that they have increased electricity imports and halted exports after a wave of recent Russian air strikes on the Ukrainian energy network. 

Energy facilities were attacked in three Ukrainian regions on Sunday following an earlier attack on Friday that caused blackouts across the country. 

An underground gas storage site was also attacked on Sunday, according to Ukraine’s state-run Naftogaz energy company.

Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said equipment was damaged in the strike and that repairs were underway. 

Polish farmers have completely blocked freight traffic at two checkpoints on the Poland-Ukraine border, Ukrainian media has reported. 

Andrii Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s state border guard, said that around 500 trucks were currently stuck at the Poland-Ukraine border as Polish farmers continue a protest against cheap Ukrainian food imports that they say are undercutting their prices. 

The issue has seen protests as well as border blockades by farmers and has strained the usually warm relations between Warsaw and Kyiv. 

Earlier this month, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, backed a proposal to impose restrictions on duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods to the EU after protests by French farmers in Paris. 

Ukraine had no involvement in Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed over 130 people, the White House said as it emphasised that Islamic State was to blame for the massacre. 

“ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever,” said White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson. 

US vice-president Kamala Harris also stated that “ISIS-K is actually, by all accounts, responsible for what happened”.

The ‘K’ refers to Khorasan, an Afghan province associated with a branch of the terror group. 

The comments came after Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had suggested the gunmen had links with Kyiv.

The assailants were apprehended while heading towards the Russia-Ukraine border where, Putin claimed, a “window had been prepared for them to cross”. 

Russia has stated that it would stand against “international terrorism”, but has so far not blamed Islamic State directly. 

Ukraine strongly denies any involvement in the attack. 

Russian authorities have raised the death toll from Friday’s mass shooting at a concert hall on the western edge of Moscow to 137, rising from an earlier figure of 133. 

Investigators said that the figure included three children and that 62 bodies had been identified. 

Guns and rounds of ammunition were also found at the site of the attack, Russia’s investigation committee said, as well as a car used by the suspected gunmen to flee the scene. 

Two Russian MiG-31 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two US Air Force B-1B bombers approaching the Russian border in the Barents Sea, the Russian defence ministry has said. 

A Russian defence spokesman added that the US bombers did not violate Russian airspace and corrected their course after encountering the Russian aircraft. 

Islamic State has released new videos of Friday’s assault on a Moscow concert hall, substantiating the group’s claim to have carried out the attack that killed more than 130 people. 

The videos, which were published by IS’s news agency Amaq, showed the gunmen filming themselves as they fired at concert-goers in the lobby of the Crocus City Hall. 

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, declared that Russia would stand against “international terrorism” in an address to the nation on Saturday, but has so far not blamed Islamic State directly. 

Putin has attempted to link the attack to Ukraine, alleging that the gunmen were apprehended while heading towards the Russia-Ukraine border where a “window had been prepared for them to cross”. 

Ukraine has strongly denied any involvement in the attack. 

Several senior Russian officials have called for the return of the death penalty following Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall. 

“It is necessary to bring back the death penalty when it comes to terrorism and murder,” said Yury Afonin, deputy head of the State Duma’s security committee, on Saturday.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Friday also appeared to call for those responsible to be killed. 

“Terrorists only understand retaliatory terror... death for death,” Mr Medvedev wrote on an post on encrypted messaging service Telegram. 

Capital punishment is legal in Russia but is not used due to a moratorium that has been in place since 1996, when Russia implemented a pause in the death penalty in order to become a member of the Council of Europe. 

Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe in March 2022. 

Flags have been lowered to half-mast across Russia for a day of national mourning after gunmen killed more than 130 people on Friday during an assault on a Moscow concert hall.

Russian president Vladimir Putin declared March 24 a day of national morning during an address to the nation on Saturday in which he also pledged to track down and punish those responsible for the attack. 

In Russia, only the president has the power to declare a day of mourning. Flags are flown at half-mast, events are cancelled and TV channels update schedules to remove advertising and entertainment broadcasts. 

In the Soviet period, national mourning was usually only declared after the deaths of Soviet leaders. A notable exception was the death of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. 

Pope Francis has condemned Friday’s Moscow terror attack and sent prayers to the victims. 

Speaking after a Palm Sunday mass in the Vatican, the pope said: “I assure my prayers for the victims of the cowardly terrorist attack carried out the other evening in Moscow. 

“May the Lord welcome them in his peace and comfort their families, and convert the hearts of those... who organise and carry out these inhuman actions which offend God, who commanded ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”

Russia has begun a national day of mourning after gunmen killed over 130 people at a concert hall on the western edge of Moscow.

The president of Tajikistan has condemned the attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people, amid allegations that the gunmen were Tajikistani nationals. 

Russian media, including Telegram channels with links to the security services, have claimed that the four suspected attackers were Tajiks. 

Russian authorities have as yet said only that the four suspects were all foreign nationals. 

“Terrorists have no nationality, no homeland and no religion,” President Emomali Rahmon told Russian president Vladimir Putin in a phone call, the Tajikistan president’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) have claimed responsibility for the attack and are known to be active in Tajikistan.

ISIS-K emerged in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and have gained a reputation for extreme brutality.

Read more about Islamic State Khorasan here.

Britain has “very little confidence” in Russia’s statements linking Ukraine to the attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people on Friday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said. 

“I take what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt... after what we’ve seen from them over the last few years,” Mr Hunt said. 

“We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine.

“But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tragedy when innocent people lose their lives, when you have horrible bombings,” he added.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russian authorities have not yet blamed the group. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin said the attackers were apprehended while “travelling towards Ukraine where, according to preliminary information, they had a window to cross the border”.

Ukraine strongly denies any involvement in the attack. 

The Ukrainian military said it has hit two large Russian warships as well as other installations used by the Russian navy in the Black Sea. 

“The Defence Forces have successfully hit the Yamal and Azov landing ships, a communications centre and several infrastructure facilities belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” a Ukrainian military spokesman said. 

The extent of the damage could not be immediately verified, but a Russian official in the region reported a major Ukrainian air attack and said more than 10 missiles had been shot down over the Black Sea port of Sevastopol.